Despite rejection and critics, Lady Antebellum come out on top

Charles Kelley of Lady Antebellum woke up on his second day in Toronto and was told that Own the Night, his band’s third album, was the No. 1 record in both Canada and the United States.

“We immediately started taking shots,” jokes Kelley, who splits vocal duties with Hillary Scott, making the Nashville-based pop country act something like the Mamas & the Papas for a generation that’s grown up listening to music on their cellphone. “There’s obviously nerves coming into a new record, but to know that it came out of the gates doing well takes a little pressure off. It feels great, man.”

The group, which also includes multi-instrumentalist Dave Haywood (all three musicians write the songs), appears to be bucking the trends of their industry. While even long-established artists struggle to move units these days, the six-time Grammy Award-winners sold more than five million copies of 2010’s Need You Now, which cemented their genre-bending formula. And this past weekend, they added to their mainstream fame with a performance on Saturday Night Live.

“Play us on a polka station for all we care, we just want our music to be heard,” says Scott, 25, who was in college when she first met her bandmates, adding that her influences range from folk singers such as Mindy Smith and Patty Griffin to such British pop acts as Coldplay and Snow Patrol. “We don’t care where we’re played, as long as our music gets heard.”

The group’s had no problem getting their music out there, but the band was hardly an overnight success. Scott was twice rejected on American Idol, and her solo record deal went south just months before meeting Kelley and Haywood.

“Life happens the way it’s supposed to happen and so, when I was just starting out, yeah, I was turned down for stuff, but that just wasn’t my story,” says Scott, who would later perform twice on American Idol with her band. “It’s not like I had some pent-up anger or resentment, you just have to realize – just because someone tells you no, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”

Own the Night, which was written and recorded near the group’s homes in Nashville, finds the band surfing familiar themes. Many of the album’s 13 tracks deal with heartbreak, a theme each of the band members believes keeps even their most pop-friendly songs rooted in country.

“When you can’t control what the stock market’s doing or where there’s going to be an earthquake or hurricane, the one thing that remains is that everyone wants to love and be loved,” Scott says. “There’s some escape in talking about your emotions and I think talking about that, and turning it into a story, is something country music always has done.”

While country purists may have problems with Lady Antebellum and their kinfolk – multi-platinum pop-country hybrids such as Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift – the group seems immune to critics. On the morning they discover they have the continent’s most popular record, the members of Lady Antebellum don’t do shots. Instead, they talk confidently about finding their sound.

“On the first record, there were a couple of songs where maybe we were chasing what we perceived to be something that might work on the radio,” Kelley says. “Later on, less obvious singles like “Run to You” and “Need You Now” ended up being big radio hits. That made us go, ‘All right, if we don’t try so hard and just do what we think sounds cool, our best stuff will come.’ ”